If I may, gentlemen, ladies, Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Vice President: a brief philosophical interlude. I believe the state of Oregon itself is a direct affront to my existence. That is, Oregon's name contains within in it the seedlings of a movement with a design on uprooting me, or perhaps even asserting, quite madly, that I do not exist and have never existed. They have indeed challenged my very ontology. To wit: one need only append the letter "G" to the beginning of the state's name, and suffix an "e" to its end. This results in the neologism "Goregone," or, using a clever bit of décollage, "Gore Gone." But any jackass can see that, even without semantic modification, Oregonians clearly want me out. And I just want to say that I shall do everything in my power to prove my existence to these Gorean nihilists.
President Al Gore, Earth Prime (Restored from Hyperbackup Version 2.0), Inaugural Address, January 20, 2001
















